Sunday, July 2, 2017

How Much is a Russian’s Life Worth Anyway?

Paul
Goble

Staunton, July 1 – According to a
new study by the Russian Finance University and the Rosgosstrakh insurance
company, Russians now believe they should be compensated 1.2 million US dollars
for deaths wrongful or in combat, a figure nearly twice as large as the 624,000
US dollars they suggested two years ago.

Among Russians as is often the case
elsewhere as well, the greatest compensation is given to the youngest, the most
educated and the wealthiest, but there are also important differences
geographically, with the highest figures being in Moscow and St. Petersburg and
the lowest in Toliatti, Khabarovsk, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod and Penza.

The Russian government is
notoriously stingy in paying compensation, Kasparov commentator Aleksandr
Nemets says. After the Kursk disaster in 2001, Moscow paid only 100,000 US
dollars in rubles to the families of the submarine sailors who had lost their
lives (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=59554AAF36D54).

According to US media reports at the
time, Nemets continues, Putin advised those receiving the money to “put it in a
bank … in a foreign bank.”

Now, the Russian government gives
even less for military losses. Some families of soldiers killed in the Donbass
have received only about 60,000 US dollars in compensation, and some have not
received anything at all.

The situation with the civil
population is worse, or at least it is worse for “the 95 percent of ‘the
nonprivileged.’” Most get nothing despite the rise in self-evaluation that Rossiiskaya gazeta is celebrating. All
its figures mean is that the gap between expectations and reality is only
widening.